February 28, 2015

Mahlet, a young Ethiopian girl with a gift for storytelling, has a special bond with Yacob, the oldest in her household. When Yacob tells her stories of how he and the other warriors fought in the resistance against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, Mahlet vows to become the keeper and teller of her family’s stories. From the time of Menelik to the present, Mahlet's long voyage through time and space links thousands of stories between Africa and Europe. Intensely personal, this powerful and beautifully narrated novel tells the story of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia as well as of others around the globe who have suffered under colonialism or have been forcibly exiled from their homelands.

February 27, 2015

Unusually, the Academy Awards featured two movies in 2014 centered on spying—the film The Imitation Game about Alan Turing and the breaking of the Nazi Enigma cipher machine, and the documentary Citizenfour about Edward Snowden and his disclosures about the secret activities of U.S. and British intelligence agencies. Unlike silver screen depictions of fictional worlds of espionage, neither film involves martinis, shaken or stirred. Instead, The Imitation Game and Citizenfour put human faces on historic moments involving the shadow worlds of intelligence and counter-intelligence.

Citizenfour won the Oscar for best documentary, a development that will encourage more people to watch it. Whether you love or loathe Snowden, Citizenfour is worth seeing. It provides a perspective that the leaked documents and the acrimonious debates they provoked do not. It lets you watch Ed Snowden, up close and personal, as he proceeds to transform his world irrevocably and change our world in ways we cannot avoid confronting.

Make no mistake, Citizenfour is advocacy, a paean to someone its director, Laura Poitras, believes is a hero for disclosing what she, Snowden, and others believe are illegal abuses of political power. Even for those less enamored with Snowden, the intimacy of the documentary connects history-making events with this very real man. The big issues Snowden’s actions raised about power, technology, individual rights, the rule of law, and democracy can obscure that it all began with one person deciding on a course of fateful action of terrifying uncertainty.

When I watched Citizenfour, the film’s humanizing of the “Snowden affair” connected in my mind with The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. Turing played a central role in British intelligence’s deciphering of communications Nazi Germany transmitted through codes generated by its Enigma machine. This triumph has long been part of the lore of the allied victory in World War II, with the work accomplished through the electro-mechanical deciphering “bombe” at Bletchley Park obtaining mythic status. Never have so many owed so much to so few—a sentiment equally applicable to the men and women who broke Enigma.

The Imitation Game provides a human face to this feat of counter-intelligence in its focus on Turing, his brilliance, his contribution to the war effort, and his suffering as a gay man living at a time homosexuality was criminalized. The secrets Turing kept went beyond the ones found in the information produced from deciphered German communications.

But the connections between Turing and Snowden go beyond these humanizing depictions of history-changing people. Turing was a pioneer in computer science who helped build the foundations of the intensively computerized societies in which we live. Snowden’s disclosures of official secrets reflect his decision to expose the expansive power inter-networked computers have given governments vis-à-vis individuals around the world.

In The Imitation Game, the need to keep the secrets from deciphered Enigma signals is presented as necessary, legitimate, and heroic, even at the gut-wrenching cost of knowingly sacrificing soldiers, sailors, and civilians in order to preserve the secret that Enigma was broken. Here is secrecy at the honorable service of the survival of British democracy and the allied cause against the Nazi menace. The shocking treatment of Turing later in his life not only reveals persecution by prejudice but also sullies what Turing did for Western civilization during World War II in creating and keeping secrets.

In Citizenfour, the secrets gathered by the keepers of the cyber progeny of the Bletchley Park bombe have become the menace to individual rights, the rule of law, and democracy. Here secrecy amounts to the abuse of power and the loss of privacy on a global scale. Snowden leaks secrets for reasons that, across the decades, echo why Turing and his compatriots preserved them, reasons that subsume the individual in a collective sacrifice for a better tomorrow. As the camera pans out from Snowden in his Moscow apartment, the film dares to ask what we will do with what Snowden has done for today's globally interconnected world.

Hollywood films and documentaries, however critically acclaimed, should not be guiding stars for how we perceive espionage and counter-intelligence. However, The Imitation Game and Citizenfour both remind us that state secrets constitute awesome power wielded by persons caught between the unforgiving exigencies of national security and the unforgivable complicity of allowing these exigencies to overwhelm the reasons why security matters to a free people.

David P. Fidler is editor of the forthcoming The Snowden Reader. He is the James Louis Calamaras Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and is a Senior Fellow at the IU Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. He currently is a Visiting Fellow for Cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.

Every Friday during Black History Month, author Christopher A. Brooks has shared a post about legendary African American tenor Roland Hayes. This is the final installment of his four-part series.

"Bring me a queen!" This was Fannie Hayes’s admonition to Roland (and her other sons). "If you marry a white girl, boy, bring me a queen. Otherwise, stay in your own race." Fannie’s most famous son didn't heed his mother’s advice.

On October 11, 1923, the evening of his Prague debut, Roland Hayes walked out of his hotel bathroom and was shocked to find the regal six foot striking beauty, Countess Bertha Katharina Nadine Colloredo-Mansfeld (born Kolowrat-Krakovsky) standing in the middle of his room unannounced. The only thing he could muster was “Oh, excuse me, I haven't quite finished dressing.” Unfazed, the stately beauty whose Hapsburg ancestry dated back hundreds of years, charmingly introduced herself and said, “The Countess Hoyos has most kindly made it possible for me to meet you. My friends and I are delighted when we can come to know the visiting artists. It helps us to enter into their art.” This began a forty-five year relationship between the two which was passionate, secretive, turbulent, transcendent, yet because of the times, ultimately doomed. Roland met the Countess literally weeks after his mother Fannie’s death and without question, she filled a void in the vulnerable tenor’s life. Months after having met Countess Bertha, Roland Hayes wrote a letter to Alaine Locke (who was teaching at Howard University). In part Hayes wrote:

Dear boy, my life is so beautiful and satisfyingnow that my cup of joy remains perpetuallyat a state of overflow. I never expected tohave been so happy in this life as the successof my work (which is my meat and drink) hasbrought me. My darling Mother passed on tobring all of this to me and I recognize her indi-viduality and her great Love in it all.

The full letter makes it clear that it was the Countess who was responsible for his “perpetual state of overflow.”

By the time Roland arrived back in Prague in April 1924, he and the Countess had been exchanging increasingly passionate letters in which the tenor surrendered his natural guardedness and confessed his total delight in her friendship. On April 29, as his train pushed across Central Europe, the tenor started a stream-of-consciousness letter to her; he poured out his swelling emotions, finishing the correspondence several days later when he seemed satisfied that he had left no doubt in her mind that the experience of working with her had fundamentally transformed him as an artist—and as a man.

29th Morning Budapest April 29th1924

What a great revelation! And you, my revealer ofwonders, have caused a great illumination in myHeaven sky. I see endless reaches, and as Ibehold all the matchless beauty I am overcomewith its all enveloping sweetness.

How we have advanced since the 18th.Does it not sometimes awaken astonishment inyou as it does in myself, when you can see withclear eyes this advancement that has taken onsuch enormous dimensions and which also hasrung in so much else of sheer beauty and loveli-ness?

While rambling and poetically incoherent, the excerpt from Hayes’s letter made his emotions plain. Nearing forty years old, these were hardly the written utterances of an infatuated school boy. In the remaining fifty-two years of his life, Roland never declared himself in writing to anyone, or even came close to doing so as he did here. The vulnerability and sheer delight that he expressed in this early note provides more than a glimpse into his soul and into the spirit of the man and the artist that Countess Bertha was fast creating. With complete abandon, he refers to Bertha as “my divine,” “my strength,” “my comfort,” and makes other unambiguous declarations such as “And you, my revealer of wonders, have caused a great illumination in my Heaven sky” and “I can never be without you and your presence . . .” In his autobiography Angel Mo’, Hayes credits his success to the nameless Countess Bertha, the mother of four sons with her husband Count Hieronymus Colloredo-Mansfeld. “To this lady . . . I owe the real beginning of my intellectual life and my musical maturity.”

As if there was little question, Roland and Countess Bertha consummated their relationship in Spain in 1924. The idea of an African American man having a child with a married woman of the old European aristocracy at that time was daunting to say the least.i The implications for his carefully crafted career which was nearing its peak were obvious. Yet, he felt helpless to deny her wish to blend the black and white races, to say nothing of his own desire. Some months later in 1925, Bertha informed Count Hieronymus that she had conceived Roland’s child. He was obviously furious, but agreed to build a chalet for her near the Pyrenees Mountains in southern France. He continued to support her with a generous monthly stipend. The two never divorced, and for the sake of family often appeared in public as husband and wife.

Roland and the Countess’s daughter, Maria Dolores Franzyska Kolowrat-Krakowsky, soon to be known as “Maya,” was born at 2:00 a.m. on February 12, 1926 in a private clinic in Basel, Switzerland. Roland was in Boston awaiting the news. His response to Bertha’s telegram announcing their daughter’s birth was more resigned than paternal. “Truth is supreme, am going on in silence and solitude.” On more than one occasion, Roland wanted to “adopt” his daughter and raise her in the United States as a foreign born child, but the Countess would not have it.

By the mid-1930's, the relationship between Roland and the Countess had soured, but they remained in regular contact. Maya maintained contact with her father mostly through letters and an occasional visit. When the singer performed in Paris, Countess Bertha and their daughter always attended. In 1937, after Roland had married his cousin, Alzada, and had a daughter with her, the Hayes family traveled to Europe where the singer was concertizing. Alzada and her daughter Afrika attended his concert in Paris. Also attending the recital was Countess Bertha and his other daughter Maya.

Hayes’s oldest daughter Maya eventually became the mother of six children including her oldest twin sons, Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff (now well-known personalities in France). The twins met their celebrated grandfather only once when they were five years old in Paris in the mid-1950s. Although their interaction with him was brief, they recalled the meeting quite vividly more than fifty years later.

Throughout their lives, they witnessed, first-hand, their mother’s grief over her absent father, Roland Hayes. Of all the players in the “Roland and the Countess” drama, Maya, without question, suffered the most. The implications of this relationship continue to develop in 2015, more than ninety years after it was started.

i Kolowrat, Confessions, p. 151. The Countess recalled when interviewed about this, “An affair would have been easier to hide,” but Bertha saw herself as “a one-man woman and could not be with one man for breakfast and another for tea.”

February 24, 2015

Sean Metzger, author of Chinese Looks: Fashion, Performance, and Race, will give a talk on his book at the Young Research Library at UCLA February 26 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. In the book he will be discussing, Metzger shows how aesthetics, gender, politics, economics, and race are interwoven and argues that close examination of particular forms of dress can help us think anew about gender and modernity. Books will be available for purchase at the event. RSVP here.

February 20, 2015

Every Friday during Black History Month, author Christopher A. Brooks will share a post about legendary African American tenor Roland Hayes. This is the third installment of his four-part series.

During the mid-1910s as he traveled around the country building his musical career, Roland Hayes met many well-known African American elites including Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and musical great Harry Burleigh. However, it was not until he arrived in London in 1920 that he would interact with a smorgasbord of Pan African Brahmins operating in that city. Within days of his arrival in the United Kingdom, Hayes and his accompanist Lawrence Brown were directed to the fiery Pan Africanist Duse Mohammed Ali who offered Hayes and Brown accommodations in his St. John’s Wood rooming house. So strident were his diatribes against Britain’s African colonialist policies that he was routinely placed under surveillance by the UK government. By the time he met Hayes, Ali had already inspired many others, most notably his one-time protégé, Marcus Garvey. The Jamaican, who came to make his presence known throughout the continental African and Diasporan world, was an early apprentice of Ali in 1912, six years before Roland Hayes arrived in London. It was from Duse Mohammed Ali that Garvey took his dictum made famous throughout the black world, “Africa for the Africans!” Ali also inspired Roland to understand the continental African experience as never before. The tenor soaked up the information like a sponge.

A devout Muslim, Duse Mohammed Ali established Islamic support groups throughout the greater London area. In 1918, he had helped to found the African Progress Union (APU), a Pan African organization whose members were made up of continental, British-born, and West Indian blacks. The organization was dedicated to addressing human rights controversies, as well as black representation on the continent and throughout the Diaspora. A major effort of the APU was the call to restore indigenous control to those African colonies that Germany had lost after its defeat in World War I. This was among the organizations that Roland would lend his support.

Hayes met many continental Africans nationalists including Amodu Tijani of Southwestern Nigeria (whose title was Chief Oluwa), who were guests at Ali’s house. Inside of five months of Roland’s arrival, he was presented with a proclamation which read:

Roland Hayes

The Negro Tenor

We, the undersigned, having closely observed your interesting rise to a pre-eminent and enviable position in the realm of music, and being members of the various races that go to make up the families who comprise the inhabitants of Africa as well as those who have descended from the same parent stock as yourself, beg to tender you our high felicitations and regard on this your visit to the seat of the British Empire.

We realize that your success is our success and that by proving that you are capable of the higher musical culture you are rendering incalculable benefits to your race. As blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone, we wish you continued success in all your undertakings praying that an All-Wise Creator will graciously grant you health and strength to complete the task you have so nobly undertaken which must indubitably redound to His Glory and to the amelioration and recognition of the undoubted mental capacities and endowments of your brothers of the Negro Race.

We, therefore, beg that you will accept this slight token of our undying admiration and esteem.

Among the twenty-three signatories were John Alcindor, the well-known Trinidadian activist physician, John Archer, president of the African Progress Union, and Ali. The majority of signatories were continental Africans. Robert Broadhurst was another highly regarded Pan Africanist and signer of the document. He and Hayes became lifelong friends and even gave each other African names. In their written communications, Roland was known as “Cunjah” and Broadhurst was “Tarah.” Hayes sang benefit performances to raise money for the APU and several other Pan African organizations throughout the United Kingdom.

The 1921 Second Pan African Congress in London brought Roland Hayes back in contact with W. E. B. Du Bois. Hayes attended several sessions of the historic conference when Du Bois issued his celebrated Manifesto in which he accused the British of under developing its African colonies. He also condemned the UK government for refusing to train continental Africans in how to self-govern. From that point, the communications between Hayes and Du Bois display a mutual admiration. By the end of the 1920s, Hayes had become an international celebrity and the darling of the African American community (with one or two hiccups perhaps). He became personal friends with Mary McCloud Bethune, George Washington Carver, Walter White, James Weldon Johnson, among many other highly influential and high profile African Americans who were calling for just and fair practices for people of African ancestry. Although Hayes had been active in the Pan African movement in Europe, he tempered such activities in his home country for fear of estranging his white American patrons. Among those whom he distanced himself from once they arrived in the United States would be the outspoken Francophone African Prince Marc Kojo Tovalou Houenou (known as “Tova”), after he aligned himself with Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association in the United States. Hayes also lost touch with his old friend, Duse Mohammed Ali, who had moved to Detroit in the mid-1920s to found the Universal Islamic Society.

In July 1942, Roland Hayes became the focus of international racial solidarity after he was assaulted in Rome, Georgia by local police. The news of the Hayes “beat down” was heard around the world. The New York Times headline read, “Beaten in Georgia.” Once again, civil rights icons like Walter White, Thurgood Marshall, and Mary McCloud Bethune screamed at the top of their lungs about the dastardly deed. In fact, their screams were heard all the way in Washington, D.C. at the Justice Department and the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt lent a voice of support to the humiliated tenor. Hayes received letters from all manner of Americans, even those offering to educate his traumatized daughter who had witnessed the police assault.

A letter similar to the one he received in 1921 from the British-based Pan Africanists came to Hayes in response to the Rome, Georgia incident. The 1942 signatories included eminent Black nationalists like George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and his dear friend Robert “Tarah” Broadhurst, who was the driving force behind the letter.

Although Roland Hayes was far a nationalist in the tradition of Garvey, Du Bois, and many others, he was nonetheless thrown into a role that he did not especially relish—yet another example of black humiliation.

America is a land where the best of all democracies has been achieved for some people but in Georgia, Roland Hayes, the world-famous singer is beaten for being Colored and nobody is jailed—nor can Mr. Hayes vote in the State where he was born. Yet America is a country where Roland Hayes can come from a log cabin to wealth and fame—in spite of the segment that still wishes to maltreat him physically and spiritually, famous though he is.

February 18, 2015

It has been interesting to see the success of the best selling book, Killing Patton, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. The book has been sitting on the New York Times Best Sellers list for weeks. As the author of The Fighting Pattons, I have been correlated with the Patton story for many years. In that time I have written about Patton for a variety of newspapers and magazines, along with the book.

When I first heard about the Killing Patton project, I assumed it would investigate Patton’s death, something that is covered in my book, and in my view was the terribly tragic outcome of an automobile accident. Having read previous O’Reilly/Dugard “killing” books, I knew the authors typically give the reader a run-up to the death of say, President Abraham Lincoln, the subject of one of their other books in the series, and then provide all of the theories about the death. In the case of Patton’s death, considering his heroics on the battlefield, it is hard to put one’s arms around the idea that a traffic accident between Patton’s vehicle and an Army truck would snuff out the life of such an historical figure, especially when the two other people in the car that day were uninjured. In that context O’Reilly and Dugard provide an interesting and detailed look at the last year of World War Two, with a particular focus on Patton and his great Third Army, along with his contributions to the victory in Europe. Additionally, the last section of the book details the accident and then explores those who may have wanted Patton dead.

As a reader will learn in my book, The Fighting Pattons, it is my firm belief Patton was in a very unfortunate accident, paralyzed as a result, and died several days later from complications as a result of the accident and his paralysis. Not very glamorous to be sure, but my belief is based on an examination of all the records made available to me, along with my interviews with the other two people in the car that day, Woody Woodring, Patton’s driver, and General “Hap” Gay, Patton’s chief of staff. In fact, to the best of our knowledge I am the only author who ever managed to speak with both individuals concerning their recollections of the accident. Again, my conclusion is simple: Patton died as a result of an accident. Thousands of people die every year in accidents and the list includes famous and not-so-famous people. Patton happened to be famous.

Over the years a number of conspiracy theories arose concerning Patton’s death, including the idea that the Russians wanted him dead because he represented a post-war threat should he be able to convince the Allies to go after the Russians, which history records Patton believed would eventually need to occur. Other possible conspirators included disgruntled current or former members of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the wartime intelligence agency), or perhaps Army or other military types who held a grudge against Patton and wanted him out of the picture, and the list goes on. While people from the entities listed may have greatly disliked Patton, it is highly unlikely a solid plan was ever designed, or more importantly for the story, the means ever secured to kill Patton, although it makes for a great story. That reality however, has not stopped numerous books and even a motion picture from recounting the “assassination.”

So, as one of the authors who spent time researching the Patton story, and uniquely to almost all the others, spending a great deal of time with the Patton family and Major General George S. Patton, the son of the World War Two general, I am pleased to see the popularity of Killing Patton, if only because it keeps the accomplishment of Patton in the discussion of great battlefield leaders. In their book Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard kindly write, “There is a vast body of excellent literature about Patton, so there is no shortage of published resources…Beyond the words of Patton himself, the writings of (three other writers and)…Brian Sobel (The Fighting Pattons) were particularly helpful. Each of them writes of Patton as if they knew him…” Nice words indeed.

Brian M. Sobel is the author of The Fighting Pattons. Additionally, Sobel has authored another book, an anthology, and many articles for national magazines and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal.

Learn more about Patton’s death in this excerpt from The Fighting Pattons.

February 17, 2015

On this day back in 1950, the Indiana University trustees appointed Bernard Perry as the first director of Indiana University Press. And so began our 65-year history of publishing books of global significance, regional importance, and lasting value.

To celebrate our 65th anniversary, we're offering 65% off select books for one week only. More than 2,500 titles are available on the 65th anniversary sale page. Use code 65off at checkout. Hurry, offer ends 2/24/15. Shop now

Discount applies only to books listed on the sale page. Quantities are limited. Ebooks and journals subscriptions excluded. Offer does not apply to orders placed by telephone or mail. No adjustments can be made on orders placed before 2/17/15. Sale ends 2/24/15 at 11:59 p.m. EDT.

"I'm excited to see Eddie Murphy return to the show for the first time in 30 years." But as for Sarah Palin? Marx probably will be channel surfing during that segment.

SNL is gearing up for a big celebration, with a live three and a half hour broadcast starting at 8 p.m. and red carpet coverage one hour before. So after four decades, why do we still keep tuning into the show? Marx says there are three reasons.

"SNL remains relevant after all these years because it of its own self-promotion, the influence of its stars outside of the show, and its unique ability to both capture and generate national conversations about politics, culture, and comedy."

Like SNL, we also enjoy doing some self-promotion, so to celebrate its 40th anniversary, we're giving away a copy of Marx's book Saturday Night Live and American TV, plus this handy SNL tote bag to carry it in! Fill out this entry form by February 20 for your chance to win.

February 13, 2015

Every Friday during Black History Month, author Christopher A. Brooks will share a post about legendary African American tenor Roland Hayes. This is the second installment of his four-part series.

There were many influences and people in the life of Roland Hayes who would help to mold him into the man and artist that the world came to know. Important among these influences was his mother Fannie Hayes. In fact, his 1942 biography was entitled Angel Mo’ (short for angel mother) and Her Son, Roland Hayes.

Fannie Mann, the oldest child of Peter and Mandy was born enslaved likely in 1847, but some sources indicate an earlier date. Her enslaved name was “Pony,” but she seems to have adopted “Fannie” as emancipation approached. In 1865, she met and married William Hayes who was close to thirty years her senior. Although Roland was given, in some of his publicity information, to say that both of his parents had been enslaved, there is no evidence to confirm that his father had been held in captivity.

Fannie and William Hayes subsequently gave birth to seven children, of which Roland was the sixth. In 1886, Fannie Hayes purchased ten acres of land for $1.00 per acre in Gordon County, Georgia, that had once belonged to Joe Mann, the family’s enslaver. Nearly one hundred and thirty years later, the original land remains in that family. In 1926, Roland bought land directly adjacent to that of his mother’s and named it Angel Mo’ Farm.

A God-fearing Baptist woman, Fannie Hayes wanted nothing more than to have one of her sons to enter the pulpit. Although she got her wish, it was not to be Roland, despite his oratorical gift as a child. Her religious instructions to her children (especially Roland), however, would be key to his deep understanding and mastery of African American spirituals. He regarded his work in that genre in very religious terms.

Mother Fannie, as she was often known, was never strongly supportive of Roland’s career in music. Her often quoted dictum to him was “They tell me Negroes can’t understand good music, and white people don’t want to hear it from us. So it seems to me you are making a mistake.” By that point, however, Roland would not be deterred. He was determined that he would become a world class artist, and would also take care of his elderly mother.

Roland moved to Boston in the early 1910s to continue his vocal studies. After a short time, he moved his mother from Chattanooga to join him there. Totally committed to carrying her own weight, Fannie took in washing and ironing to help support the household. Fannie often traveled with Roland when he toured the country. In one of his coast to coast tours in 1918, they had an extended stay in California. While there, Fannie helped her son to reach one of his greatest personal epiphanies—understanding the uniqueness of the Black singing voice.

In 1921, after living for a year in the United Kingdom, Roland had a command performance from Buckingham Palace to sing before King George VI and Queen Mary. The news was reported around the world. Fannie was back in Boston when she was interviewed by reporters about her son’s triumph. She appeared to be more interested in her laundry than in speaking to reporters. When Roland cabled her about the news, her response to him was for him to remember who he was and to “give credit where credit is due.”

To be sure, Fannie Hayes lived a life full of personal tragedy. By February 1923, she had buried five of her seven children, including her precious “Baby” Jessie, the youngest Hayes brother who was found dead in Atlantic City. She stoically traveled to New Jersey alone to inter his remains. Her end came in September of that year, but she lived long enough to see the beginnings of her son’s remarkable rise to fame.

Unable to be at her funeral in Boston because he was singing in Europe, Roland sent instructions that his recording of “Sit Down” be played at her funeral. Of the many spirituals which Hayes helped to spread around the world, this was among the ones which Fannie had taught him when they stilled lived in northeast Georgia.

The song told of an enslaved, pre-Civil War black woman, whom Roland seemed to have likened to Fannie. As it was important to her, it also held artistic and emotional significance for him. Fannie’s version told of an enslaved African woman in the pre-Civil War South who had reached the age of eighty and knew her end was near. Sitting in her rocking chair, angels asked about her restlessness. She responded, “I’m waiting for my mother, I want to tell her howdy.” The angels in turn responded, “Sit down and rest a little while,” which Roland understood as an invitation to the old woman’s death.

He interpreted the repeated phrase throughout the song, “Sit down, rest a little while,” as a metaphor for Mother Fannie’s life. With the final phrase in the song for her to “Sit down, sit down, yes, my Lord. Oh, Hallelujah, in my kingdom,” it was an equally powerful metaphor for Fannie Hayes’s death.

A few years later, Roland Hayes placed a tombstone on his mother’s burial site. The epitaph reads:

HERE LIES THE BODY OF FANNIE HAYES BORN IN GEORGIA A SLAVE, ABOUT THE YEAR 1842 AND DIED IN BOSTON SEPTEMBER 26, 1923 HER SPIRIT A PERMANENTLY SACRED AND HELPFUL INFLUENCE REMAINS ALERT AND BLOOMING IN OUR HUMAN GARDEN WIFE OF WILLIAM HAYES (DEC.) MOTHER OF WILLIAM JR. (DEC.) MATTIE (DEC.) NATHANIEL (DEC.) JOHN (DECEASED AND LYING HERE) Roland ROBERT JESSE (DEC.)

February 12, 2015

Kathy Sloane, author of Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club, will give a guest lecture at California State University today at 5:30 p.m. Sloane is a documentary photographer and oral historian who has spent decades examining the multicultural life of the San Francisco Bay area. Her discussion will be a part of the Hansen Lecture in Oral and Public History. This will be an illustrated lecture that emphasizes the connections between Sloane's documentary work and public history.